Mount Watatic 4.57

Mount Watatic is a 1832foot monadnock located just south of the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, at the southern end of the Wapack Range of mountains. It lies within Ashburnham, Massachusetts, Ashby, Massachusetts, and New Ipswich, New Hampshire; the 22mi Wapack Trail and the 92mi Midstate Trail both cross the mountain. The Yellow Arrow trail is 1.1 mile.The east and south side of the mountain drains into the Souhegan River watershed, to the Merrimack River thence the Atlantic Ocean; the west and north sides drain into the Millers River watershed, to the Connecticut River, thence into Long Island Sound.Mount Watatic was the site of a ski area that operated from 1965 until 1984. An attempt to reopen the ski area in 1988 failed. The bald summit of the mountain featured a fire tower, open to the public, until its removal in 1996.ConservationIn 2000, the summit of the mountain was sold to Industrial Communications and Electronics for the development of a 150ft cellular telephone tower and a road to the summit. In 2002, prior to development of the communications tower, the mountain was purchased for $2,500,000 by the Ashby Land Trust, the Town of Ashby, the Ashburnham Conservation Trust, the Town of Ashburnham, Mass Dept of Fish and Wildlife and Mass Dept of Conservation and Recreation. Unfortunately by this point a road had already been blasted into the ski area (back) side of the mountain, making several of the still maintained ski trails unusable. The purchase resulted in the permanent protection of approximately 281acre of the mountain, including the summit, as conservation land. In July 2010, Mount Watatic was named one of the "1000 Great Places in Massachusetts" by the State Commission of Massachusetts.